As near as I can tell, most accidents can be avoided simply by slowing down
No doubt. But one of the advantages of automation is that it allows you to speed things up considerably, and still be safer overall. Go slowly is a great tactic for slow-witted Humans; but it's a waste of time for quick-witted computers.
In my own driving I try to make a point of maintaining a prudent spacing behind the car in front of me, and to spot nearby cars who aren't especially steady in their lane. Boring, but apparently safe, with no stunt-car driving necessary.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that defensive driving courses teach, and it's commendable that you do it. But a driving AI wouldn't need any of that; it could drive and manoeuver just as fast as the physics of the vehicle allow.
Think of those unstable aeroplane designs that can out-fly anything else in the sky because they entrust most of the actual control over the plane to a computer system. Not that we want unstable cars... but the ability to control a vehicle that precisely allows it to out-perform a vehicle that's dependent on a Human's much slower response times.
So this is some mystical car that can simply phase through intersections, and which requires zero seconds to negotiate the parking lot? Wow, maybe I should be driving -- I had no idea that automotive manufacturers had begun to incorporate magic into their designs.
Apparently the owner's driveway opens up directly onto a major street with a 50mph limit, rather than the 25-30mph typical of residential areas. The property values must be stellar!
I wouldn't even do it for half a mile.
There's a word for that... but it's not a very a nice one.
I stop by the grocery store three or four times a week after work myself. It's a ten minute walk, and I routinely buy 25 or 30 pounds worth of groceries. Using a backpack, it's a breeze. One of my former roommates would use one of those carry-on suitcases with the wheels and extensible handle; a lot of students have started using those to haul their book around too.
I suppose that if you were silly enough to try to carry a bunch of grocery bags any real distance, it would be an extraordinarily unpleasant experience. But you'll notice very few students carry their 40 pounds worth of textbooks and notebooks around using plastic bags. And you'll notice that very few infantries equip their soldiers with plastic bags to carry their gear. Both groups tend to use backpacks -- a much more efficient, comfortable way to transport goods.
I take it you've tried this? Before you jump to conclusions, be sure that you've performed the procedure correctly. Headphones on, music loud enough that you fail to notice to auditory cues from the people around you, and attention completely focused on some quality literature. Trade paperbacks are ideal, as they can be operated using one hand -- a necessity on a crowded bus with only standing room available to you.
Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver got me home today on the most hobo-ridden bus line in all of Vancouver (a city known for it's rather abundant population of junkies and homeless schizophrenics).
Give it a serious try. I guarantee that the method can work for you -- or your money back. Operators are standing by.
Well, where I, we have access to fantastic, otherworldly pieces of technology for handling these situations.
One of them is called an "umbrella"; it costs about 0.5% of what it costs just to buy a truly shitty car, and it costs nothing in maintenance. Granted, it usually needs to be replaced every six months, but it's still a bargain. Its efficacy is vastly enhanced by the use of another mystical piece of technology called the "jacket".
When the temperature hits 115F, there's the "t-shirt"; the use of any of a wide variety of hat-technologies can provide shelter from the sun. Humans, at least those who aren't morbidly obese or suffering from hyperthermia, are quite capable of regulating their own body temperature during a leisurely half-hour walk under all but the most Saharan conditions. Millions of people go to beaches and tropical resorts every year to experience precisely such conditions, so don't go making out as if it's an intolerable strain to be forced to endure them.
There are plenty of good reasons to drive, even if it IS a short distance.
You can come up with any number of reasons to drive. But are they worth $6000 a year? That is, incidentally, the average cost of owning, operating, and maintaining a fairly typical family car in British Columbia (where I live). To someone earning $25,000 a year, that $6000 is a VERY deep and painful slice out of their disposable income. So there are plenty of good reasons not to drive as well.
I realize you assume he could and would want to carry all his groceries home on a 15 minute walk, but unless he's just making daily trips for 2 or 3 things, that's gonne be a real pain.
2 or 3 things? I suppose if those two or three things are 10lb hams, that would be a reasonable limit. But most people can carry more than that, particularly if they have the sense to use a backpack or something.
and would want
Who said anything about what people want? No one's denying that most people would prefer to be able to use a vehicle for transporting even quite small loads over short distances. One of my roommates would drive to the corner store for candy, even though it actually took less time to walk there. Laziness is rife, and there's no reason not to call it what it is. Ever wondered why obesity has become such a serious health issue in western societies?
Wow, I'm guessing you either live with someone who does your shopping or you live alone and order take-out every night.
And yet millions of low-income families in the developed world -- including the US -- somehow manage it...
If you had any idea how much a week's worth of groceries looks like for a family of four, you would not suggest that walking, even 1.5 miles, was a reasonable solution.
I live alone, and walk about 1 mile to get groceries. In fact, even years ago when I was living with my parents (who have a car), I would frequently rode my bike 5 miles into town to get groceries. So yes, it seems eminently reasonable to me.
Not around here. Around here, the primary users are the able-bodied poor.
I suppose clarification would be helpful in this case. If we're talking about who uses transit the most, there are two distinct ways of looking at it: which group makes up the majority of the people using public transit, versus which group has the largest proportion of its members using public transit.
Strictly speaking, yes, the able-bodied poor outnumber all other groups on transit. That's because they outnumber all other groups period.
Nevertheless, the able-bodied poor are, for the most part, VASTLY better off financially than the elderly et al, and a much greater percentage of them own and drive cars than the elderly, the disabled, and children.
The fact remains that those are the people who depend the most on public transit. The healthy adult who works for minimum wage, 30 hours a week, could manage to afford a car, although it would be extremely difficult. But The paraplegic who can't work at all -- he's lucky if he's not homeless and begging.
Preteens DO take public transit, even assuming that you discount school buses. City bus systems carry children to school in many areas. And for children whose parents work, that's typically the only means they have to travel any distance. For teenager it's doubly true; try taking a bus line that passes by a the local highschool right around the time it lets out, and you'll see what I mean.
And, more importantly, walking several blocks to the nearest bus stop multiple times on each trip. I have a good friend with muscular dystrophy. She drives a car. The concept of her walking everywhere to catch busses, especially in winter, is almost laughably bad.
And I have a friend whose cancer required that the better part of her cerebellum be removed. She doesn't walk anywhere -- she had the good sense to find a home with a bus-stop ten metres from the doorway. My goodness, who would have thought that anecdotal evidence could be so worthless!
Tell that to gardeners, construction workers, factory workers, and all other "manual laborers". Tell them how wealthy they are. Go on. Because, at least around here, those are the sort of people you see on the bus. Them and students.
Yes, because manual laborers and service industry workers outnumber everyone else by a huge margin. You might as well claim that it's right-handed people who benefit the most from the transit, because they're the ones who fill it.
Nevertheless, construction workers, factory workers, etc, are much more able to afford cars than people who can't work. Are you actually daffy enough to believe that the percentage of construction workers who drive is LESS than the percentage of seriously disabled people? There's a reason that so many municipalities give free bus passes to the disabled and NOT to blue-collar union workers. There's are reason that many bus services substantially discount their fares for the children and the elderly who depend on them.
I said the "young". As in children. As in "American parents don't typically want their kids riding alone on a bus and would rather just drop them off somewhere".
And a minute ago, you were describing in great detail about how all these blue-collar labourers (who constitute a rather sizable proportion of American parents) all take the bus. Funny how that works... they drop their kids off in the car, then ditch it and take the bus?
How nice for you that this is all you need to be unaware of everyone else around you.
It's a well-documented psychological phenomenon. Reading and music are both very effective at causing people to tune out their surroundings, assuming the book/music in question are even remotely interesting. Immersive videogames are even better, but unfortunately the quality of portable videogaming
Rules out the weak, the disabled, many of the elderly, many of the young (safety)
This line cracked me up -- since those four groups are the primary users of public transportation.
Those are the groups that are the least likely to a) be capable of driving, and b) be able to afford the cost of owning, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a vehicle.
Healthy adults are the people who take transit the least, for the simple reason that they're the ones that can afford cars and have both the mental acumen and physical health necessary to operate them.
It's nice that you're sooooo concerned about the eldery, disabled, children, and the weak -- but your reasoning is completely ass-backwards.
Forces people to be in close proximity with other people (laugh if you want, but the hypochondriacs, agoraphobes, racists, and vast throngs of people who merely want to be left alone won't be laughing)
That's what an iPod and a book are for. Even the most obnoxious of the homeless insane wont try to talk to someone protected by such an overpowering barrier of leave-me-the-fuck-alone.
I can drive to the grocery store in three minutes, but it'd take about an hour get there via bus
The grocery is that close, but you can't walk? You have to take the bus to go a mile and a half?! Normal residential speed limits top out at 30mph, and assuming that you can start and stop instantaneously, that means your grocery store is at most 1.5 miles away. A reasonably healthy person can walk that in about 15 minutes. Children and the elderly might take 30, but that's not bad at all (and they'll be healthier for it).
Anyone who's actually used public transportation at all (as opposed to the people who go around making up bullshit about how unsuited it is for everyone except healthy adults) knows that for short trips, it's usually easier to walk.
Let's review:
Youths generally can't afford cars, so they depend on public transit.
The elderly frequently can't afford cars and are often incapable of driving, so they depend on public transit.
The disabled are one of the lowest income groups in any society, especially American society with its disdain for social services. Do you really think that they can afford cars? Not to mention the fact that many disabilities directly prevent people from driving.
Anyone who drives ANYWHERE that can be reached in three minutes is just plain lazy. Exceptions can be made for when you're sick or for those times when you need prophylactics, like, immediately. But otherwise, it's just pathetic.
You could always turn the AI in your car/motorcycle off...
Of course, people with the good sense to let the AI drive will have a rather notable reproductive advantage over those who insist on risking their lives so pointlessly -- cars contribute substantially to premature mortality -- so Human evolution will favour those who satisfy their craving for independence in other ways.
Mark's list of ways to savour one's independence while NOT driving:
Write an anti-government pamphlet on your laptop during the spare time you would have otherwise spent staring at the back-bumper of the car ahead of you.
Study gun maintenance, so that you fantasize that you're ready to defend yourself in the ridiculously improbable event that your life is ever threatened. Or maybe the AI is delivering you to a hunting ground or shooting competition, and you want to get your gear ready. Whatever, it's all good.
Hash out plans to start your own business, so that you're no longer a slave to the man. It doesn't even have to be a business -- maybe you think bigger than that, and you want to hold your own Beer Hall Putsch. Maybe you and your buddies plan to March on Nome and "want to become the state". With all this time freed up, the world is your oyster.
Fuck in the backseat, since you'll probably enjoy that a hell of a lot more than you would mindlessly operating a wheel and and a few foot pedals.
You have to be a pretty sad and pathetic person to feel that operating a large, dangerous machine for hours at a time every single day is the only way you can feel free. And it's not even as if the AI is stopping you from going out-backing, road-tripping, or racing at the track. You can still do all of those things! Driving the public road system without the AI will probably be illegal after a while, but since when do you have the right to put other people's lives at risk?
When the asshole who's trying to simultaneously drive, drink coffee, and load up the playlist on his new iPod, swerves into your lane... would you rather rely on:
Your own over-worked brain, which is physically incapable of response times better than about 100 milliseconds;
Your conditioned reflexes, which are physically incapable of response times better than about a 5 milliseconds, and are -- at best -- simplistic and only suited to routine driving conditions;
An AI that is not only capable of response times of less than 100 microseconds, but is also capable of using bad-ass algorithms to independently control the braking, power, and steering of each wheel to manoeuver the vehicle in ways that no Human ever could, while simultaneously snapping a picture that can be used later on during the lawsuit, and autodialing 911 in case the aforementioned jackass with the coffee and iPod crashes into non-AI-equipped vehicle owned by someone who didn't spent their automotive budget as wisely as you did.
I know which of those three I'd rather have controlling my vehicle.
And not all heroine is sold to junkies. Some people enjoy it responsibly.
And diamonds have always been in demand.
Wow.... you're not particularly sharp. It's amazing to see someone so completely taken in by marketing. Ever seen the movie Idiocracy? You'd fit right into that society. A drone who mindlessly repeats what he sees in commercials.
Diamonds weren't in demand until the 20th century. Before that, they were just another gemstone, notable for being extremely hard. It took very deliberate marketing to change that. And you bought into it. Sad, really.
So if you are against buying diamonds because some of them are blood diamonds, you should be against very many things.
Yes, you should.
But let's compare:
Buying diamonds: supports an industry that fund slavery and wars of genocide. Leads to extensive Human misery, and keeps Africa poor and backwards, as well as providing a breeding ground for extremism that may one day become a very serious problem for western nations... not to mention preventing the development of a potentially huge market for western goods, ultimately hindering our own economic success.
Using Bittorrent: potentially puts the RIAA and MPAA out of business, resulting in there being two fewer lobby groups corrupting the democratic process and paying to have our rights taken away. Musicians have to spend more time touring, which benefits us consumers and creates far more jobs than producing and selling albums ever could. The entire economy benefits as a result.
People who aren't goddam fucking morons can tell that these things are radically different.
But yes, you should be against supporting any market that fuels warfare, genocide, and slavery. You don't particularly need to avoid supporting the heinous act of sharing though.
I think the claim is that instigating event was the evolution of flowering plants. That triggered an explosion in the biodiversity of plants, insects, and small fast-evolving animals like wee lizards and mammals. Animal biodiversity leads invariably to pathogen diversity, as there are more combinations of organisms between which pathogens can transfer and which can participate in parasite life-cycles.
The vast majority of flowers are intended to attract insects. Think about the most notorious disease-spreading insect: mosquitoes -- which are primarily nectar feeders (the males exclusively so). So it's not as if flowering plants only support the existence of cute fuzzy little insect species like butterflies and honeybees. Flowering plants form the base for a sizable percentage of the entire insect population, including many of the ones that spread diseases and parasites.
Insects aren't much better at eating cellulosic biomass than animals are, and blood alone isn't a particularly practical food-source. In fact, are there ANY insects that can subsist entirely on blood? Some arachnids do, but no insects. It's easy to see how the emergence of nectar-producing plants would give rise to vast array of new types of insects, some of which would then be willing to take a bite out of passing dinosaurs to supplement their diets.
I despise religion and everything that it stands for, and I soundly mock anyone foolish enough to squander their lives in uncomfortable buildings trying to curry favor with a guy who is depicted in his own promotional literature as being extraordinarily proud of having ordered his followers to commit genocide, murder homosexuals and promiscuous women, and take little girls as sex slaves so long as they don't beat them so hard that they die within one day of the beating.
Nevertheless, the Vatican has at least learned from its mistakes. They've recognized the inevitability of scientific progress, and seen that embracing it is their only hope of staving off complete public acceptance of the church's irrelevancy.
One of the huge benefits of fossil fuels is their portability
Indeed -- all the more reason to find alternatives. This is something that is often overlooked in the alternative energy debate. We're squandering a fuel that is so ridiculously useful for long-range transportation on activities where oil has no compelling advantage, like urban transportation and large stationary reactors. Not to mention oil's usefulness to the chemical industry -- producing plastics and other compounds for which we do not yet have alternative feedstocks (although here too, we're vastly under-diversified).
Frankly, the people who are worried about how they're going to get to work are focusing on the wrong problem. By wasting that oil in their car, there is that much less oil to get fresh produce to the grocery store or from which to make the feedstocks from which their medications and whatnot are produced.
The larger the plant gets, the more inefficient it gets.
Actually, this the exact opposite of reality. Larger plants are vastly more efficient. Otherwise, all of the world's power would be provided by trillions of 500 milliwatt plants rather than thousands of 500 megawatt plants.
Think about it -- these plants have to store heat; heat is proportional to mass, which scales as cube of diameter. Meanwhile, they lose heat at a rate that is proportional to surface area, which scales as the square of diameter. You need only the most basic math skills to see that this results in VASTLY better efficiency at larger sizes.
But, no, I'm sure you're much smarter than... you know... the actual engineers and physicists who designed this plant. Or the people who built any of the nuclear plants that pump liquid salt to transfer heat. Those silly people, they've probably never even HEARD of using oil to store heat!
Solar panels and cells are expensive to produce, and the process uses tremendous amounts of energy. After all, it requires producing perfectly pure silicon, not a trivial task. And a huge amount of waste is produced in the process.
That's not to dismiss solar cells -- but we need to explore every avenue. And at the large scales where power plants become commercially viable, heat engines rule. Coal and gas-fired reactors, as well as nuclear plants, they're all just big heat engines. Heat engines have over two centuries of engineering research and development behind them. And Semiconductors just can't be produced in large enough quantities cheaply enough (yet).
Anti-nuclear cowards seem to forget that nuclear power's main alternative -- coal -- requires destroying vast swaths of land to extract, and releases far more radioactive waste into the atmosphere than nuclear releases into manageable steel drums.
I know that YOU probably enjoy acid rain, mercury poisoning, and the pulmonary disorders that are inextricably linked to the emissions from coal plants, but I don't. Meanwhile, nuclear plants produce well-contained waste that can be reprocessed, and use tiny amounts of fuel. And once we finally get past this kind of pathetic cowardice, we can finally start putting serious investment into research into nuclear power -- and get ideas like the Thorium and Actinium fuel cycles into practice, allowing nearly perfect reprocessing and allowing the exploitation of Thorium, which is incredibly abundant. And uranium isn't exactly rare -- it's just uranium 235 that's rare, and we don't even need to use enriched uranium in many reactor designs.
Seriously, what's wrong with you people? No one questions the value of solar, but it's not a panacea. We need more than one energy source. It's that kind of ridiculous thinking that got us into this situation where we're overly dependent on fossil fuels. We should have been diversifying our sources of energy all along, not wimpering in the corner because of paranoid delusions about t3h rad1at10n coming to get us.
Secondly, the Constitution speaks directly to IP in Article I. It says Congress shall legislate on the matter. It's not exactly legislative overreaching when the Constitution commands it.
Ah, so you're that kind of libertarian -- the kind that supports absolutely any form of coercive government so long as there is a piece of paper (preferably an archaic one) that specifically allows the use of violence against the people for that end.
That is to say, the ridiculous kind. If the constitution spoke directly to the use of taxation to fund universal healthcare, you'd support that too? I'm guessing no. Hell, we could add an amendment that guaranteed every citizen an iPod and a cookie.
A libertarian who owns a patent to a drug would likely feel an IP law is no different than a burglary statute protecting his TV.
There's a BIG difference here. You can protect your TV, just like you can fight to retain your liberty, or defend your own life. But once you publish something, it's impossible to stop people from copying without a government that monitors and controls what everyone else publishes. It requires extensive and intrusive spying. And it requires violence against the people. Any policy that requires sending thugs to people's homes to arrest them and forcefully seize their property... well, it's questionable at best. That's why, despite having millenia in which to become accustomed to it, people are still generally uncomfortable about taxation. Of course, government is impossible without taxation; but life can go on just fine without destroying the lives of people who like to share.
Actually there is one huge difference. If employees get together to bargain, it's called a union. If corporations do it, it's called "collusion" and it's a per se antitrust violation. A libertarian believes that two corporations should be able to get together just like unions can and set wages. But under the modern paradigm, that would be a violation of antitrust law. The theory of antitrust, by the way, is that collusion of players in a market actually destroys the market.
In your analogy, corporate collusion is more analogous to collusion between different unions. This is one of the defining features of corporate sycophants -- they don't want to see so much as a single pair of workers cooperating financially, but consider absolutely nothing to be wrong with a group of owners cooperating financially.
If a group of several thousand investors can cooperate as a single economic entity, why should workers have to bargain with them individually? But, if you happen to hold to the notion of antitrust laws, then sure -- they can just as easily be applied to unions colluding with each other.
Besides, nothing stops you from starting your own competing union. There's no law that says you can't start your own steelworkers union, or grocery bagging union, or whatever else. If no one has the guts to compete with those unions for employees or contracts, that's just too fucking bad. It's like the era when Microsoft had no competition for x86 operating systems. No one would even attempt compete with them, and that was just how it was. And if you want to avoid hiring members of the steelworkers union because you disapprove of how aggressively they negotiate contracts, well, that's your perogative, just as it's my perogative to not shop at Circuit City if I don't approve of how they compensate their employees.
First off, stop misusing the term "neocon." It is only meant to differentiate a more modern foreign policy from that of earlier conservatives. I find it highly unlikely you could tell a paleocon from a neocon based on his stand on IP.
That may be the technical definition, but the common usage of neocon refers to the set of fascist, corporatist policies being implemented right now by those in control of the modern Republican p
I just encountered these for the first time when I started my new job. Every desk in IT had a dual-monitor arm thing. Big ones too. Naturally, I was all like "now this is how business is done!" Turns out that only IT has these beauties. Even the top management has smaller, single, stand-mounted monitors. Or just laptops, sometimes without even a docking station. There's something sad about a desk with just a mouse and a power adapter.
I don't know about that. I mean, the credit card companies may very well make such suggestions to retailers, but I don't think that customers feel the same way.
When I worked in retail (which ended all of two weeks ago...), people would routinely thank me for actually checking the signatures, and asking for IDs from those who wrote "CID" (cute, huh?) on the back. They'd often tell me that I was the very first cashier to ask them, sometimes in years.
Slashdotters are often masters of hypocrisy: "libertarianism for me, socialism for you." If you really were a libertarian, you'd believe that a company should pay employees whatever it desires, whether it is Circuit City or Microsoft.
No, I would believe that a company should be allowed -- that is, be free -- to pay employees whatever it desires. What I would believe they should do is completely different. Just like I believe that people should tell the truth; I speak poorly of liars, and try not to associate or do business with them. Likewise, I speak poorly of corporations that underpay their employees, and try not to do business with them.
Simply because it is your will and not the government's will assailing Circuit City, the theory behind it is still nannyism, your morality substituted for that of the wage market's (which you are confusing for the free market in goods). Call that "libertarianism" all you want, but it sounds a lot more like the libs from the labor unions and the Democrats in Congress rather than the Cato institute.
First off, labour is a commodity like anything else, and markets don't have morality. Markets simply exist. People have morality.
Second, I never said that I was a libertarian. But I know that libertarians do possess the concept of morality, and can believe that certain actions are wrong while still asserting that people have the right to perform those actions. I happen to believe that people should have the right to disseminate hate literature (illegal in my country and many others) -- but I still think it's wrong and I'd spit on anyone who did so. If we were discussing the KKK, would you actually come on here and ask what business of ours is it if the KKK mails out hate literature?
What libertarians and anarchists consistently fail to realize that there is ALWAYS force involved, that "free" markets are inherently impossible for Humans. Whether it's consumer boycotts, government regulations, union strikes, or corporate bullying, there is always force. There is always someone bringing their will to bear.
Incidentally, you don't get to call yourself a libertarian if you're against unions -- a union is no different than a corporation. A corporation is a tool to make money for shareholders, a union is a tool to make money for union members. Everyone's free to belong or not belong, invest or not invest, sign contracts or not sign them, and so on. You seem to have confused capitalism with libertarianism -- a common mistake among neoconservatives. It's only when the government empowers them that there's a problem; it's a problem when the government sells its power to corporations, and it's a problem when the government trades its power to unions for votes. But if you pay more than lip-service to the concept of people being able to freely to participate in markets, and to associate with each other as they please, unions and corporations are nearly indistinguishable.
or your "nationalize intellectual property" evangelism
See, this is how I know that you're a neocon, and not a libertarian. Libertarians understand that "intellectual property" is a function of government regulation. Without the government coming around to kick the ass of anyone who commits the heinous sin of sharing, the entire notion of intellectual property would fail in short order. Without intense government intervention, "intellectual property" naturally collectivizes, not unlike air. But then, I suppose that the neocons will be the first on board when some company claims that they've purchased the right to America's air; they'll saying that anyone who believes in collectivist air is just a dirty socialist.
Nobody here has all the answers, I merely seek to cut down those who pretend that they do -- by saying, for example, that the free market doesn't work and we need the Democrats to ride in on their white horses and save the world from the evils of the market.
I took a quick look, and I can't find even a single post in the entire thread that even mentions the Democrats. There is heaps of criticism for the Bush Government, for neoconservatives, and for the Republican party (which, at this point, is basically the neoconservative party). Now, I understand that to you, that is probably synonymous with saying "Vote Democrat!", but it ain't the case. The Democrats just one extremely compelling trait: they're not a bunch of corporate-sycophant neoconservatives that want to completely deregulate everything except how people fuck and who can marry who.
No sane person would claim that the Democratic Party is a panacea, or anything better than a least-of-two-evils. But the Republican party has become an extraordinarily destructive force in the world. To America, and to people and societies around the globe. There are seventy nine thousand innocent people dead because of the Republican Party's lies and deceptions, and a whole generation of Islamic extremists who need nothing more than an accurate history of this decade to motivate them to violence.
And for what? Some magical non-existent deregulation that the Bush government hasn't provided? A reduction in government power? The PATRIOT act?! Massive increases in warrantless domestic spying? And you can actually sit there and bitch that the Democrats wont fix things?
As long as they wont make things worse as quickly as Bush is, that should be enough for you to at least admit that they are vastly preferable to the Republicans. I mean, how perfectly do the Republicans have to re-enact the rise of Fascism before people sit up and notice?
This would be a really nice speech... if it had anything whatsoever to do with this issue.
There is absolutely NOTHING the government does that encourages corporations to pay CEOs one thousands times more than the rank and file, or to lay off their best salespeople and retain their worst.
I'm not saying that government regulation is awesome or wonderful or anything like that. I'm just saying that it's a naive fantasy to pretend that this is all the government's fault. Government regulation had absolutely nothing to do with this at all.
Economy of scale is a fact of life -- government doesn't create it, and government regulations are only the tiniest element of it. There were corporations long before there were health codes and business licenses, and they were crushing small rivals right from the start. A mom & pop business can't afford to put a satellite into space, or research a new polymer from which to make toys, or buy parts in lots of 100,000, or get a better price from the supplier just by threatening to switch to a different supplier.
The main reason that corporations can buy power is that voters don't give a shit -- they're too caught up in stupid, asinine issues like whether the government is "liberal" or "conservative", whether it cracks down hard enough on types of sex that offend superstitious retards, whether it considers tumor-like growths in people's wombs to be people or not, and so on. Not to mention shit like how tall their politicians are and how nice their hair is.
If people would vote based on how competent and trustworthy politicians were, rather than on asinine bullshit, corporations buying power would not be a problem. But at least we have the chance -- any power that is NOT collected into the government is inherently for sale. Hell, as it is, the only reason people don't sell their votes to corporations is that it's prohibited by the government. The only reason people can't sell their children into slavery to cover debts is that it's prohibited by the government.
what a publicly held corporation pays its employees is not any of the average Slashdotter's business - assuming you aren't CC stockholders - since I know you are all libertarians and not lefty redistributionists.
Since I know you are a libertarian and not a neocon sycophant, you'll no doubt agree that we're free to debate and discuss any goddam fucking thing we please, and if some of us would prefer not to shop at Circuit City because we disapprove of their compensation schemes, we're free to do that as well. That's the great thing about the free market -- we can buy or not, for any reason whatsoever. And we can think whatever we please about Circuit City. And say whatever we please about Circuit City. Our business is whatsoever we choose it to be, thank you very much.
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Think of those unstable aeroplane designs that can out-fly anything else in the sky because they entrust most of the actual control over the plane to a computer system. Not that we want unstable cars... but the ability to control a vehicle that precisely allows it to out-perform a vehicle that's dependent on a Human's much slower response times.
Apparently the owner's driveway opens up directly onto a major street with a 50mph limit, rather than the 25-30mph typical of residential areas. The property values must be stellar!
There's a word for that... but it's not a very a nice one.I suppose that if you were silly enough to try to carry a bunch of grocery bags any real distance, it would be an extraordinarily unpleasant experience. But you'll notice very few students carry their 40 pounds worth of textbooks and notebooks around using plastic bags. And you'll notice that very few infantries equip their soldiers with plastic bags to carry their gear. Both groups tend to use backpacks -- a much more efficient, comfortable way to transport goods.
Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver got me home today on the most hobo-ridden bus line in all of Vancouver (a city known for it's rather abundant population of junkies and homeless schizophrenics).
Give it a serious try. I guarantee that the method can work for you -- or your money back. Operators are standing by.
One of them is called an "umbrella"; it costs about 0.5% of what it costs just to buy a truly shitty car, and it costs nothing in maintenance. Granted, it usually needs to be replaced every six months, but it's still a bargain. Its efficacy is vastly enhanced by the use of another mystical piece of technology called the "jacket".
When the temperature hits 115F, there's the "t-shirt"; the use of any of a wide variety of hat-technologies can provide shelter from the sun. Humans, at least those who aren't morbidly obese or suffering from hyperthermia, are quite capable of regulating their own body temperature during a leisurely half-hour walk under all but the most Saharan conditions. Millions of people go to beaches and tropical resorts every year to experience precisely such conditions, so don't go making out as if it's an intolerable strain to be forced to endure them.
You can come up with any number of reasons to drive. But are they worth $6000 a year? That is, incidentally, the average cost of owning, operating, and maintaining a fairly typical family car in British Columbia (where I live). To someone earning $25,000 a year, that $6000 is a VERY deep and painful slice out of their disposable income. So there are plenty of good reasons not to drive as well.I suppose clarification would be helpful in this case. If we're talking about who uses transit the most, there are two distinct ways of looking at it: which group makes up the majority of the people using public transit, versus which group has the largest proportion of its members using public transit.
Strictly speaking, yes, the able-bodied poor outnumber all other groups on transit. That's because they outnumber all other groups period.
Nevertheless, the able-bodied poor are, for the most part, VASTLY better off financially than the elderly et al, and a much greater percentage of them own and drive cars than the elderly, the disabled, and children.
The fact remains that those are the people who depend the most on public transit. The healthy adult who works for minimum wage, 30 hours a week, could manage to afford a car, although it would be extremely difficult. But The paraplegic who can't work at all -- he's lucky if he's not homeless and begging.
Preteens DO take public transit, even assuming that you discount school buses. City bus systems carry children to school in many areas. And for children whose parents work, that's typically the only means they have to travel any distance. For teenager it's doubly true; try taking a bus line that passes by a the local highschool right around the time it lets out, and you'll see what I mean.
And I have a friend whose cancer required that the better part of her cerebellum be removed. She doesn't walk anywhere -- she had the good sense to find a home with a bus-stop ten metres from the doorway. My goodness, who would have thought that anecdotal evidence could be so worthless!
Yes, because manual laborers and service industry workers outnumber everyone else by a huge margin. You might as well claim that it's right-handed people who benefit the most from the transit, because they're the ones who fill it.
Nevertheless, construction workers, factory workers, etc, are much more able to afford cars than people who can't work. Are you actually daffy enough to believe that the percentage of construction workers who drive is LESS than the percentage of seriously disabled people? There's a reason that so many municipalities give free bus passes to the disabled and NOT to blue-collar union workers. There's are reason that many bus services substantially discount their fares for the children and the elderly who depend on them.
And a minute ago, you were describing in great detail about how all these blue-collar labourers (who constitute a rather sizable proportion of American parents) all take the bus. Funny how that works... they drop their kids off in the car, then ditch it and take the bus?
It's a well-documented psychological phenomenon. Reading and music are both very effective at causing people to tune out their surroundings, assuming the book/music in question are even remotely interesting. Immersive videogames are even better, but unfortunately the quality of portable videogaming
Those are the groups that are the least likely to a) be capable of driving, and b) be able to afford the cost of owning, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a vehicle.
Healthy adults are the people who take transit the least, for the simple reason that they're the ones that can afford cars and have both the mental acumen and physical health necessary to operate them.
It's nice that you're sooooo concerned about the eldery, disabled, children, and the weak -- but your reasoning is completely ass-backwards.
That's what an iPod and a book are for. Even the most obnoxious of the homeless insane wont try to talk to someone protected by such an overpowering barrier of leave-me-the-fuck-alone.The grocery is that close, but you can't walk? You have to take the bus to go a mile and a half?! Normal residential speed limits top out at 30mph, and assuming that you can start and stop instantaneously, that means your grocery store is at most 1.5 miles away. A reasonably healthy person can walk that in about 15 minutes. Children and the elderly might take 30, but that's not bad at all (and they'll be healthier for it).Anyone who's actually used public transportation at all (as opposed to the people who go around making up bullshit about how unsuited it is for everyone except healthy adults) knows that for short trips, it's usually easier to walk.
Let's review:
Of course, people with the good sense to let the AI drive will have a rather notable reproductive advantage over those who insist on risking their lives so pointlessly -- cars contribute substantially to premature mortality -- so Human evolution will favour those who satisfy their craving for independence in other ways.
Mark's list of ways to savour one's independence while NOT driving:
You have to be a pretty sad and pathetic person to feel that operating a large, dangerous machine for hours at a time every single day is the only way you can feel free. And it's not even as if the AI is stopping you from going out-backing, road-tripping, or racing at the track. You can still do all of those things! Driving the public road system without the AI will probably be illegal after a while, but since when do you have the right to put other people's lives at risk?
When the asshole who's trying to simultaneously drive, drink coffee, and load up the playlist on his new iPod, swerves into your lane... would you rather rely on:
- Your own over-worked brain, which is physically incapable of response times better than about 100 milliseconds;
- Your conditioned reflexes, which are physically incapable of response times better than about a 5 milliseconds, and are -- at best -- simplistic and only suited to routine driving conditions;
- An AI that is not only capable of response times of less than 100 microseconds, but is also capable of using bad-ass algorithms to independently control the braking, power, and steering of each wheel to manoeuver the vehicle in ways that no Human ever could, while simultaneously snapping a picture that can be used later on during the lawsuit, and autodialing 911 in case the aforementioned jackass with the coffee and iPod crashes into non-AI-equipped vehicle owned by someone who didn't spent their automotive budget as wisely as you did.
I know which of those three I'd rather have controlling my vehicle.Diamonds weren't in demand until the 20th century. Before that, they were just another gemstone, notable for being extremely hard. It took very deliberate marketing to change that. And you bought into it. Sad, really.
But let's compare:
- Buying diamonds: supports an industry that fund slavery and wars of genocide. Leads to extensive Human misery, and keeps Africa poor and backwards, as well as providing a breeding ground for extremism that may one day become a very serious problem for western nations... not to mention preventing the development of a potentially huge market for western goods, ultimately hindering our own economic success.
- Using Bittorrent: potentially puts the RIAA and MPAA out of business, resulting in there being two fewer lobby groups corrupting the democratic process and paying to have our rights taken away. Musicians have to spend more time touring, which benefits us consumers and creates far more jobs than producing and selling albums ever could. The entire economy benefits as a result.
People who aren't goddam fucking morons can tell that these things are radically different.But yes, you should be against supporting any market that fuels warfare, genocide, and slavery. You don't particularly need to avoid supporting the heinous act of sharing though.
The vast majority of flowers are intended to attract insects. Think about the most notorious disease-spreading insect: mosquitoes -- which are primarily nectar feeders (the males exclusively so). So it's not as if flowering plants only support the existence of cute fuzzy little insect species like butterflies and honeybees. Flowering plants form the base for a sizable percentage of the entire insect population, including many of the ones that spread diseases and parasites.
Insects aren't much better at eating cellulosic biomass than animals are, and blood alone isn't a particularly practical food-source. In fact, are there ANY insects that can subsist entirely on blood? Some arachnids do, but no insects. It's easy to see how the emergence of nectar-producing plants would give rise to vast array of new types of insects, some of which would then be willing to take a bite out of passing dinosaurs to supplement their diets.
I despise religion and everything that it stands for, and I soundly mock anyone foolish enough to squander their lives in uncomfortable buildings trying to curry favor with a guy who is depicted in his own promotional literature as being extraordinarily proud of having ordered his followers to commit genocide, murder homosexuals and promiscuous women, and take little girls as sex slaves so long as they don't beat them so hard that they die within one day of the beating.
Nevertheless, the Vatican has at least learned from its mistakes. They've recognized the inevitability of scientific progress, and seen that embracing it is their only hope of staving off complete public acceptance of the church's irrelevancy.
Frankly, the people who are worried about how they're going to get to work are focusing on the wrong problem. By wasting that oil in their car, there is that much less oil to get fresh produce to the grocery store or from which to make the feedstocks from which their medications and whatnot are produced.
Think about it -- these plants have to store heat; heat is proportional to mass, which scales as cube of diameter. Meanwhile, they lose heat at a rate that is proportional to surface area, which scales as the square of diameter. You need only the most basic math skills to see that this results in VASTLY better efficiency at larger sizes.
But, no, I'm sure you're much smarter than... you know... the actual engineers and physicists who designed this plant. Or the people who built any of the nuclear plants that pump liquid salt to transfer heat. Those silly people, they've probably never even HEARD of using oil to store heat!
Solar panels and cells are expensive to produce, and the process uses tremendous amounts of energy. After all, it requires producing perfectly pure silicon, not a trivial task. And a huge amount of waste is produced in the process.
That's not to dismiss solar cells -- but we need to explore every avenue. And at the large scales where power plants become commercially viable, heat engines rule. Coal and gas-fired reactors, as well as nuclear plants, they're all just big heat engines. Heat engines have over two centuries of engineering research and development behind them. And Semiconductors just can't be produced in large enough quantities cheaply enough (yet).
I know that YOU probably enjoy acid rain, mercury poisoning, and the pulmonary disorders that are inextricably linked to the emissions from coal plants, but I don't. Meanwhile, nuclear plants produce well-contained waste that can be reprocessed, and use tiny amounts of fuel. And once we finally get past this kind of pathetic cowardice, we can finally start putting serious investment into research into nuclear power -- and get ideas like the Thorium and Actinium fuel cycles into practice, allowing nearly perfect reprocessing and allowing the exploitation of Thorium, which is incredibly abundant. And uranium isn't exactly rare -- it's just uranium 235 that's rare, and we don't even need to use enriched uranium in many reactor designs.
Seriously, what's wrong with you people? No one questions the value of solar, but it's not a panacea. We need more than one energy source. It's that kind of ridiculous thinking that got us into this situation where we're overly dependent on fossil fuels. We should have been diversifying our sources of energy all along, not wimpering in the corner because of paranoid delusions about t3h rad1at10n coming to get us.
Ah, so you're that kind of libertarian -- the kind that supports absolutely any form of coercive government so long as there is a piece of paper (preferably an archaic one) that specifically allows the use of violence against the people for that end.
That is to say, the ridiculous kind. If the constitution spoke directly to the use of taxation to fund universal healthcare, you'd support that too? I'm guessing no. Hell, we could add an amendment that guaranteed every citizen an iPod and a cookie.
There's a BIG difference here. You can protect your TV, just like you can fight to retain your liberty, or defend your own life. But once you publish something, it's impossible to stop people from copying without a government that monitors and controls what everyone else publishes. It requires extensive and intrusive spying. And it requires violence against the people. Any policy that requires sending thugs to people's homes to arrest them and forcefully seize their property... well, it's questionable at best. That's why, despite having millenia in which to become accustomed to it, people are still generally uncomfortable about taxation. Of course, government is impossible without taxation; but life can go on just fine without destroying the lives of people who like to share.
In your analogy, corporate collusion is more analogous to collusion between different unions. This is one of the defining features of corporate sycophants -- they don't want to see so much as a single pair of workers cooperating financially, but consider absolutely nothing to be wrong with a group of owners cooperating financially.
If a group of several thousand investors can cooperate as a single economic entity, why should workers have to bargain with them individually? But, if you happen to hold to the notion of antitrust laws, then sure -- they can just as easily be applied to unions colluding with each other.
Besides, nothing stops you from starting your own competing union. There's no law that says you can't start your own steelworkers union, or grocery bagging union, or whatever else. If no one has the guts to compete with those unions for employees or contracts, that's just too fucking bad. It's like the era when Microsoft had no competition for x86 operating systems. No one would even attempt compete with them, and that was just how it was. And if you want to avoid hiring members of the steelworkers union because you disapprove of how aggressively they negotiate contracts, well, that's your perogative, just as it's my perogative to not shop at Circuit City if I don't approve of how they compensate their employees.
That may be the technical definition, but the common usage of neocon refers to the set of fascist, corporatist policies being implemented right now by those in control of the modern Republican p
I just encountered these for the first time when I started my new job. Every desk in IT had a dual-monitor arm thing. Big ones too. Naturally, I was all like "now this is how business is done!" Turns out that only IT has these beauties. Even the top management has smaller, single, stand-mounted monitors. Or just laptops, sometimes without even a docking station. There's something sad about a desk with just a mouse and a power adapter.
When I worked in retail (which ended all of two weeks ago...), people would routinely thank me for actually checking the signatures, and asking for IDs from those who wrote "CID" (cute, huh?) on the back. They'd often tell me that I was the very first cashier to ask them, sometimes in years.
Second, I never said that I was a libertarian. But I know that libertarians do possess the concept of morality, and can believe that certain actions are wrong while still asserting that people have the right to perform those actions. I happen to believe that people should have the right to disseminate hate literature (illegal in my country and many others) -- but I still think it's wrong and I'd spit on anyone who did so. If we were discussing the KKK, would you actually come on here and ask what business of ours is it if the KKK mails out hate literature?
What libertarians and anarchists consistently fail to realize that there is ALWAYS force involved, that "free" markets are inherently impossible for Humans. Whether it's consumer boycotts, government regulations, union strikes, or corporate bullying, there is always force. There is always someone bringing their will to bear.
Incidentally, you don't get to call yourself a libertarian if you're against unions -- a union is no different than a corporation. A corporation is a tool to make money for shareholders, a union is a tool to make money for union members. Everyone's free to belong or not belong, invest or not invest, sign contracts or not sign them, and so on. You seem to have confused capitalism with libertarianism -- a common mistake among neoconservatives. It's only when the government empowers them that there's a problem; it's a problem when the government sells its power to corporations, and it's a problem when the government trades its power to unions for votes. But if you pay more than lip-service to the concept of people being able to freely to participate in markets, and to associate with each other as they please, unions and corporations are nearly indistinguishable.
See, this is how I know that you're a neocon, and not a libertarian. Libertarians understand that "intellectual property" is a function of government regulation. Without the government coming around to kick the ass of anyone who commits the heinous sin of sharing, the entire notion of intellectual property would fail in short order. Without intense government intervention, "intellectual property" naturally collectivizes, not unlike air. But then, I suppose that the neocons will be the first on board when some company claims that they've purchased the right to America's air; they'll saying that anyone who believes in collectivist air is just a dirty socialist.No sane person would claim that the Democratic Party is a panacea, or anything better than a least-of-two-evils. But the Republican party has become an extraordinarily destructive force in the world. To America, and to people and societies around the globe. There are seventy nine thousand innocent people dead because of the Republican Party's lies and deceptions, and a whole generation of Islamic extremists who need nothing more than an accurate history of this decade to motivate them to violence.
And for what? Some magical non-existent deregulation that the Bush government hasn't provided? A reduction in government power? The PATRIOT act?! Massive increases in warrantless domestic spying? And you can actually sit there and bitch that the Democrats wont fix things?
As long as they wont make things worse as quickly as Bush is, that should be enough for you to at least admit that they are vastly preferable to the Republicans. I mean, how perfectly do the Republicans have to re-enact the rise of Fascism before people sit up and notice?
There is absolutely NOTHING the government does that encourages corporations to pay CEOs one thousands times more than the rank and file, or to lay off their best salespeople and retain their worst.
I'm not saying that government regulation is awesome or wonderful or anything like that. I'm just saying that it's a naive fantasy to pretend that this is all the government's fault. Government regulation had absolutely nothing to do with this at all.
Economy of scale is a fact of life -- government doesn't create it, and government regulations are only the tiniest element of it. There were corporations long before there were health codes and business licenses, and they were crushing small rivals right from the start. A mom & pop business can't afford to put a satellite into space, or research a new polymer from which to make toys, or buy parts in lots of 100,000, or get a better price from the supplier just by threatening to switch to a different supplier.
The main reason that corporations can buy power is that voters don't give a shit -- they're too caught up in stupid, asinine issues like whether the government is "liberal" or "conservative", whether it cracks down hard enough on types of sex that offend superstitious retards, whether it considers tumor-like growths in people's wombs to be people or not, and so on. Not to mention shit like how tall their politicians are and how nice their hair is.
If people would vote based on how competent and trustworthy politicians were, rather than on asinine bullshit, corporations buying power would not be a problem. But at least we have the chance -- any power that is NOT collected into the government is inherently for sale. Hell, as it is, the only reason people don't sell their votes to corporations is that it's prohibited by the government. The only reason people can't sell their children into slavery to cover debts is that it's prohibited by the government.